MOUNT Edgecombe’s Jenna Ward lifted her first ever N3TC Drak Challenge title on Sunday in a gruelling duel on the lowest river in the race’s 25 year history. Ward started the final stage from Callaway bridge to Hopewell Farm alongside 2012 winner, Robyn Owen, making a comeback to domestic river marathons as part of her preparations for the upcoming Coast-To-Coast adventure race in New Zealand.
Ward and Owen slugged it out on the taxing low river, often duelling for the prized slip on a bunch of male paddlers taking part in the race. Owen managed to get the advantage of getting clear of Ward early on, but the tenacious Ward ground back on her own.
Ward was then able to exploit a similar opportunity later in the race to get clear of Owen, and then concentrated on not making any mistakes in the Lower Gorge to claim the women’s title to go with her Berg and Fish titles.
“It’s taken me 10 years to finally win the Drak,” she gushed at the finish. “It was just a matter of focussing on your own race because there were so many rapids that you could get stuck in. If you lost concentration it would have been over. I got stuck behind one of the guys in one of the rapids at the top and Robyn managed to pull away from me. I thought my race was over but it took two kilometres of hard paddling to catch back up. Then another group of guys came past us and I managed to get onto their wave and she didn’t.
“That gave me a hundred metre gap and I pretty much kept that down to the finish. Those are the opportunities that you have to take advantage of,” explained Ward.
She added that women’s canoeing was enjoying a boom, with a large number of female athletes contesting every major paddling event.
“It was super to have Robyn back with us, it is so great for the sport, and makes the event so much more exciting for everyone,” she said.
Ward added that the win was a massive confidence booster going into the final few weeks of the build-up to the FNB Dusi next month.
“This was really the first time that I could judge myself against the other girls, because I have been racing mixed doubles while I am waiting for my Dusi partner Vandi Kizsli to arrive from Hungary,” said Ward.
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